p.2 The focus of this book, and of scenario planning, is the capability of organizations to perceive
what is going on in their business environments, to think through what this means for them, and then to act upon this knowledge.
It is the need to understand the dots on the horizon, perceiving, thinking and taking action, before it is too late... We
believe... that being skillful in this constitutes the ultimate competitive advantage, in that most sources of competitive
advantage which are normally put forward can be traced back to this basic quality and capability.
p.3-4 The complex nature of change means that predicting events is impossible... Of much greater value is
the ability to recognize the 'dots on the horizon' - the signs of change that inevitably affect every organization
- and to understand their significance and how the organization should adapt.
p.4 Action determines what we see, as much as perception determines action. The same applies for thinking:
the puzzles of complexity cannot be comprehended by thinking alone but require experimentation. The process has to be seen
as one system.
p.4 The process gain we want starts from acknowledging that the organization is full of complexity,
uncertainty and paradoxes, and that a comprehensive approach is needed to help understand and manage these puzzles.
p.5 scenarios are invaluable for recognizing signs of change, understanding them and their implications,
and providing the motivation for action... Scenarios offer a powerful and unique method of harnessing organizational
insights, enabling organizations to adapt to change, by exploiting adaptive organizational learning, including perception,
thinking and action.
p.13 There are winners because there is uncertainty; without uncertainty, there can be
no winners. Therefore, instead of seeing uncertainty as a problem, we should start viewing it as the basic source
of our future success.
p.63 The practice of scenario planning is a means of overcoming strategic inertia, since it implicitly accepts
that managers' best guesses about the course of future events, and confidence in the appropriateness of current strategy,
may be mistaken.
p.63 Multiple scenarios are pen-pictures of a range of plausible futures. Each individual scenario
has an infinitesimal probability of actual occurrence but the range of a set of individual scenarios
can be considered in such a way as to bound the uncertainties that are seen to be inherent in the future
p.64-65 early recognition and reaction to an emerging future is seen, by some practitioners, as more useful
than the creation of robust strategic options.
p.81 with double-loop learning the control system is intelligent and is able to question
whether or not operating norms are appropriate... With double-loop learning, operating procedures are changed in
response to emerging situations.
p.120 All thinking is essentially a form of scenario thinking. The human mind reacts naturally
to uncertainty by exploring it through a series of scenarios of what could happen.
p.120-121 It is important to realize that scenario planning is not an ephemeral idea that will have come
and gone in a few years' time. Its long history shows that something more robust is involved here. We suggest that one reason
for this is the way scenarios fit with and represent an integral part of how we function, through our intellectual machinery
of perception, action and learning.
p.121 Humanity has always been spinning scenarios of the future, and conditioning our attention
span is directly related to it. Ingvar argues that scenario thinking underpins all our thinking. The human mind reacts
naturally to uncertainty by exploring it through a series of 'stories' - scenarios - of what could happen.
p.138 complex systems carry a degree of intrinsic unpredictability that cannot be reduced by any amount
of analysis.
p.143 Scenarios provide a structure for thinking aimed at attacking complexity.
p.147 Complexity and uncertainty are unavoidable, and are the main challenges faced by organizations.
As we have seen in previous chapters, to deal with complexity and uncertainty, individuals, organizations
and communities develop thinking approaches that are often flawed. However, awareness that the future cannot
be predicted is the starting point for overcoming these flaws. What is essential to long-term survival is the ability
to recognize and react to change before your competitors. In this chapter, we will demonstrate how scenario
thinking can be used to develop these survival skills.
p.151 all strategic decisions are affected by uncertainty and the further one peers into the future, the
greater the uncertainty impacting decisions... Uncertainty is not, according to Pierre Wack, 'just an occasional, temporary
deviation from a reasonable predictability; it is a basic structural feature of the business environment'. There can
be no competitive advantage or strategy without uncertainty. The only solution according to Wack, is to: 'accept uncertainty,
try to understand it and make it part of your reasoning', which is essentially what scenario planning attempts to do.
p.153 The scenario approach assumes that strategy is not a unique decision event, but an
ongoing and iterative process in which decisions result from an evolving compromise that needs to be periodically revisited
and tested in the light of unfolding events... Managers need to embrace uncertainty, to think creatively yet systemically
about possible future events. In doing so, scenario planners focus not on predicting single future outcomes, but rather on
managing uncertainty in a number of scenarios projecting a range of plausible future outcomes
p.155 every event or incident is part of a system that maintains its existence and functions as a whole
through the interaction of its parts.
p.157 The more that managers work with scenarios, the more they develop a tolerance for working with uncertainty,
ambiguity and complexity.
p.158 The power of scenarios is that they challenge management thinking to develop a more holistic understanding
beyond a business-as-usual mindset.
p.170 In thinking about the future, individuals need to construct new patterns of events, inter-relationships
and structures that they have not seen or experienced before.
p.178 If the ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only truly sustainable competitive
advantage, then organizational learning is not a luxury, it is a necessity... One of the most appropriate vehicles
to achieve this is the scenario planning process.
p.184 Scenario planning is about helping decision-makers to enact their environment, exploring
possible futures, understanding the change drivers and developing sustainable action.
p.187 The business world is ambiguous, subtle and complex; recognizing the unpredictability
of such a situation is the key strength of an effective scenario process. No other strategic approach is capable
of linking cause and effect to seemingly unrelated factors, where the nature of possible futures can dramatically affect organizational
success.
p.231 In order to become an effective scenario planner, it is important to hone observational skills.
p.235 Well-organized companies manage to anticipate these problems by early recognition of signals in the
environment. The problem is that there are many environmental signals that could all warn of something significant. Which
of these should be analysed?
p.236 The scenario planner observes from a point in the future, from where the present is considered and
explained - as a historian would explain historical facts... Because of inherent uncertainty, multiple future vantage points
are required. From each position, a different story is told that makes sense of the current 'blur'. Uncertainty ensures that
we will always end up with multiple scenarios: each one will be a logical story that interprets and explains what is happening
and why.
p.250 The strategic thinking process is sometimes compared to the testing of a model aircraft in a wind
tunnel. We test the Business Idea for the future (the model aircraft), in various scenarios (conditions in the wind tunnel).
If in one scenario the model fails, we need to go back to the drawing board to make it more robust. Strategy development implies
the testing of the business idea in a number of relevant scenarios.
